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    The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, & Politicians
    The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, & Politicians
    The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, & Politicians
    Ebook71 pages1 hour

    The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, & Politicians

    By D.B. McCrea

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    About this ebook

    David (D.B.) McCrea spent over twenty years serving the citizens of South Dakota as a State Game Warden. His career spanned from 1983-2006 and started in the small town of Flandreau. In 1990 McCrea transferred to the Minnehaha County Warden District in Sioux Falls, perhaps the most dangerous district in the state. His career eventually took him to Pierre where he served as Assistant Chief Game Warden and legislative lobbyist for the Division of Wildlife until his retirement. McCrea writes of his unique experiences and dangerous encounters in his series of books The Forgotten Lawmen. The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, and Politicians! is an eclectic collection of stories that provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the often misunderstood life of a South Dakota Game Warden. Readers will learn that game wardens, a.k.a. conservation officers, do more than just drive around and check licenses, which is one of many misconceptions about the game warden profession. McCrea describes in frustrating detail the numerous job duties of a game warden and the complicated system of managerial oversight, which he fittingly describes as "a wobbly house of cards." He tells the story of a young officer who is assigned to a warden district three times the size of Rhode Island. It's a district where the locals are hostile to game wardens. Within four months of his arrival the young officer is shot at and physically attacked. It's a story of how grit and raw determination can overcome nearly any obstacle. There are tales of McCrea's ability to handle complaints involving wildlife and crop damage. Readers will be introduced to the insufferable Judge "Rolle." Judge Rolle takes an intense dislike to the new Moody County Game Warden and considers poaching cases a waste of time. The Judge's legal rulings are so bizarre they impede McCrea's efforts to bring poachers to justice. McCrea takes on the members of the state legislature whom he describes as the most powerful anti-sports
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateApr 20, 2018
    ISBN9781543927924
    The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4: Animals, Poachers, & Politicians

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      Book preview

      The Forgotten Lawmen Part 4 - D.B. McCrea

      11:28-30

      The most challenging question I was asked during my career was What are the job duties of a conservation officer? The question wasn’t the most challenging because I didn’t know my job duties. The question was the most challenging because I had so many job duties, I didn’t know where to start!

      As my peers at the time can attest, never in the history of the conservation officer profession in South Dakota were officers required to perform a greater number of disparate duties than during my years of service. Those were just the duties assigned by the department. Factor in the calls from the public and officers went from barely hanging on to drowning in the shallow end of the pool.

      The job duties of a conservation officer, a.k.a. game warden, were neatly compartmentalized into five major disciplines: law enforcement, game management, fisheries management, habitat management, and public relations. There was a sixth major discipline if one were to include the most important duty of a conservation officer: picking up roadkill deer. This was the discipline that made the time and money I invested in a four-year college degree so worthwhile.

      With the exception of law enforcement and public relations, the three remaining disciplines were further divided into countless sub-disciplines, each involving management projects designed specifically for privately-owned land and waters. The system made it impossible to answer the question What are the job duties of a conservation officer? in thirty seconds, the average attention span of the questioner.

      Four of the disciplines - law, game, fish, and habitat - were under the immediate oversight of a respective regional program manager. The Division of Wildlife is comprised of four administrative regions. Four administrative regions multiplied by four program managers per region equals sixteen regional program managers. That’s a lot of program managers.

      Moreover, each major discipline was overseen by a respective program administrator in Pierre. Add the four regional supervisors to the mix and the number of managers, supervisors, and administrators with either direct or indirect oversight of conservation officers swelled to almost thirty. Fifty-five conservation officers had nearly thirty bosses. The bosses were like ants. An officer couldn’t walk from his house to his patrol vehicle without stepping on one.

      But the main reason the managerial and supervisory oversight system was so dysfunctional was the lack of flexibility between the major disciplines. The lack of flexibility led to a competition of sorts with each discipline and its respective program manager vying for the time and attention of each conservation officer.

      It was a system guaranteed to pit the regional program managers against the conservation officers because an officer’s overall job performance was determined by how often and how well he performed each discipline. Toss in a discipline as patently subjective as public relations and it was only a matter of time before a program manager’s expectations collided with an officer’s ability to meet those expectations.

      From a conservation officer’s perspective, it was this complicated matrix of too much pressure to perform too many duties in too little time with too many bosses with too little empathy that rendered the system a wobbly house of cards.

      The system occasionally ensnared the regional program managers. I watched a memorable Chinese fire drill unfold as my law enforcement program manager engaged in a heated argument with my game program manager in the front lobby of the Sioux Falls regional office. They weren’t angry with each other over a wildlife-related matter, per se. They were angry with each other over motorcycles.

      In 1990 the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was celebrating its 50th anniversary. The normal contingent of police officers were overwhelmed by the size of the crowd. Over 400,000 people had swarmed into the small town and surrounding communities. At least two outlaw motorcycle gangs were present and violence was certain to erupt. The sheriff and chief of police pleaded for help and the governor was listening.

      The governor ordered the Game and Fish Department to send twenty-five conservation officers to help with the rally. That was nearly half the officers in the state.

      Each of the four regional law enforcement program managers began a concerted effort to identify and overcome the complex logistics of moving half the warden force to Sturgis on such short notice. To their credit they pulled it off. The law enforcement managers did a magnificent job under the circumstances. The overwhelmed and dangerously outnumbered police officers in Sturgis cheered when the busload of conservation officers pulled into town.

      The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally runs the first two weeks in August. Coincidentally, so does the annual statewide pheasant brood survey. Who was responsible for running the pheasant brood survey in their district during those overlapping two weeks? It’s a rhetorical question, of course.

      While the law enforcement program managers were scrambling trying to find twenty-five officers to send to the rally, the game program managers were scrambling trying to find the twenty-five replacements needed to run the pheasant brood survey in lieu of the conservation officers headed to Sturgis.

      The regional game managers eventually found enough warm bodies to conduct the pheasant brood survey and just in the nick of time. The chicken came dangerously close

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